It may even be a solution to Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis (MS), cancers, asthma, allergies, and heart disease, all of which are associated with changes to gut bacteria.

“Understanding what makes a fecal super donor could make poop the new panacea,” the University mused.

A decade ago, FMTs were unconventional. Now they are a routine treatment for intestinal infections.

The process involves collecting feces from a healthy donor, processing it, and delivering it into the colon of the recipient.

“The last two decades have seen a growing list of medical conditions associated with changes in the microbiome—bacteria, viruses, and fungi, especially in the gut,” according to senior study author Justin O’Sullivan, from the University of Auckland’s Liggins Institute.

While the cure rate for recurrent diarrheal infection exceeds 90 percent, FMTs used to reduce symptoms in other conditions have more mixed results, averaging nearer 20 percent.

“The pattern of success in these trials demonstrates the existence of ‘super donors,’ whose stool is particularly likely to influence the host gut and lead to clinical improvement,” O’Sullivan said in a statement.

These people tend to have high levels of specific “keystone species,” or bacteria that produce chemicals whose lack in the host gut contributes to disease. Scientists must also consider additional factors, like the balance of other bacteria present, and the interactions between them.

And ultimately, super donors may not be enough.

“Some fecal transplant failures may be attributable to the gut’s immune response to transplanted microbes, possibly stemming from an underlying genetic difference between the donor and the recipient,” O’Sullivan said.

FMTs are not actually approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. But the FDA in 2013 gave doctors the green light to them it for treating chronic Clostridium difficile (C. diff) infections that don’t respond to other therapies.

The Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York recently revealed that FMTs can re-establish healthy bacteria often wiped out by chemotherapy in folks who have stem cell or bone marrow transplants for blood cancer.